Taste Of Country: Charles Esten Gets to Put His Comedy Skills to Use on ‘Nashville’

“The tweet that always makes me laugh is…where somebody goes, ‘Just realized Deacon from Nashville is Chip from Whose Line,‘ and then it always says the same thing: ‘#mindblown.’ I love that,” Esten tells Taste of Country on the set of Nashville.

While his role on Nashville falls into the category of drama, that’s not to say it doesn’t come with its light moments. “I don’t know of a good drama that doesn’t have laughs in it somewhere,” Esten says. “There’s some moments in this show that are very funny and there’s some things that I’ve been able to say on this show that are really funny.”

One of those moments comes in Season 1 when Deacon gets a visit from Scarlett’s then-boyfriend Avery (Jonathan Jackson), who admits that he doesn’t think the rugged singer likes him very much. It was this exchange where an off-the-cuff ad-lib that Esten mentioned to the writers actually made it into the script. “Then I said, ‘More to the point, what is this all about like him or don’t like him; what is this, 7th grade? I like him fine, what am I supposed to do — hand him a balloon every time I see him?” Esten explains.

“And what was funny was when the script came out a week later, a rewrite that they had Deacon say to Scarlett, ‘I like him fine; what am I supposed to do, hand him a balloon every time I see him?'” the actor says with a laugh. “So there’s a lot of laughs on this show, and that’s the only way you could ever be able to take the hard stuff.”

Though Esten believes there’s a strong correlation between drama and comedy, he knows there’s a big difference between Deacon and his Whose Line alter ego. “Clearly our characters are different,” Esten admits. “Deacon has not done a hoedown yet.”